Much has been made of President Barack Obama's desire to keep his beloved BlackBerry as a communications device. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters that, thanks to a "compromise," his boss will be able to keep a security-enhanced BlackBerry and use it for e-mail.
What's unclear is whether the device he will use is a BlackBerry made by Research In Motion, or a similar smartphone. The one that keeps getting pointed to as an option is the Sectera Edge, made by General Dynamics. It's the only such device in the category that the National Security Agency has deemed secure enough for use in the highest levels of our government. Check out the video above from CNN, which got a demonstration of the Sectera Edge from GD.
President-elect Barack Obama is sure to face his share of hurdles over the course of his presidency. But when it comes to one of them--the possibility that he might have to give up his beloved BlackBerry--he is waxing optimistic that he will overcome.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, Obama expressed confidence that he would be able to keep his smartphone, despite well-publicized concerns over the possibility of eavesdropping by hackers and other digital snoops. While Research In Motion offers encryption, the U.S. government has stricter requirements for communications security.
As my colleague Declan McCullagh reported, some handheld devices, such as General Dynamics' Sectera Edge, have been officially blessed as secure enough to handle even classified documents, e-mail, and Web browsing.
But Obama seems determined to hang on to his device of choice.
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Taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II...
(Credit: Pete Souza)Barack Obama's campaign proved itself quite worthy of the Digital Era, what with launching Facebook Connect integration, dominating Twitter, and buying an ad in an Xbox 360 racing game, among other tech-savvy milestones.
So it seems fitting that the president-elect should be the first U.S. commander in chief to have his official presidential portrait snapped with a digital camera, according to the transition Web site change.gov. (It seems a little hard to believe this hasn't happened sooner, but we're sure the new administration wouldn't risk credibility over camera models.) The shot was taken by Pete Souza, the newly announced official White House photographer.
Probably more importantly for all you camera buffs, however, is the fact that the 1916x2608-resolution shot was taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. With that news, Canon is probably extra happy it has resolved the "black dot" problem that marred some images from the high-profile, high-end SLR.
Other details revealed about the presidential portrait in the attached Exif file data, courtesy of Cameratown:
• 105mm focal length
• ISO 100
• Aperture: F/10
• Exposure: 1/125 second
• Metering mode: Pattern
• Date taken: January 13, 2009 at 5:38 p.m.
But now that Obama has helped usher in the era of digital photography for official presidential portraits, we have to wonder: will those portraits be Photoshopped?
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